Seems like every last person in Mendopecino County has an opinion about marijuana, and that every last one of them wants me to write it for them. Some folks want me to endorse converting Masonite into a hemp processing facility and some want me to take a strong, passionate stand on Measure B, and they all want to know why I don’t write more about pot. Because everyone else does, that’s why.
That said, here are a few weed-related observations: What’s so swell about marijuana anyway? Supposed “medicinal” properties aside, how does it benefit the user? Does smoking pot make a person smarter or sharper or help furnish greater insights into his or her life? What evidence is there that marijuana is anything other than a stupefying soporific that induces lethargy and saps motivation?
I can think of dozens of writers and scores of books that have been fueled by alcohol, and these would include some of the greatest writers and best books ever written. Faulkner, Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, Dylan Thomas, Hunter Thompson – all brilliant writers and all famously hard drinkers. Now show me the towering accomplishments of potheads. List the books and poems and paintings that have arisen from the vision and the diligence produced by marijuana use. I predict your list will be both short in length and thin in quality. I will grant you that pot has inspired some musical innovations, but I think both of them were used up and discarded by Pink Floyd 35 years ago.
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Where O Where is our local Robin Hood? Who amongst the Mendocino Marijuana Bandito Brigade is giving to the poor? Who, in this entire dope industry, is doing a single thing to help the sick or cure the lame or assist anyone suffering anywhere from any of the usual human miseries? Where can we look to see the glorious benefits that our magnanimous pot barons are bestowing upon the community? You plantation masters who spend your winters in Hawaii and have second homes in Bali – can you tell us what you have given back to the community that enables you to live in such fine and regal fashion?
We review U.S. history and see the trail other tycoons blazed: Carnegie public libraries all across the land (including Willits and Ukiah) from a Pennsylvania steel industry captain; John D. Rockefeller put many billions of dollars into medical facilities and colleges; Bill Gates donates to world health and education. No one is asking the Laytonville Cartel to contribute at so grand a scale. But would some financial help with salmon restoration projects, or money to paint a local church exceed the scope of what’s possible for drug lords who bring in millions of dollars a year and pay no taxes?
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My nomination for First Family of Mendouana County has to be the Keegans. Susan Keegan heads the American Cancer Society office in Ukiah and thus part of her job is to emphasize that “smoking-cigarettes-is bad.” She pitches the hard line: inhaling burning tobacco fumes will kill you, your pets, everyone in your family and all the actors on the TV shows you watch. Then there’s her husband, Peter, one of the most vocal and well-credentialed zealots on behalf of the pro-marijuana junta. He’s here to tell you, as a medical doctor no less, that there are few things in this sweet land of ours more beneficial than inhaling burning marijuana fumes. Peter’s of the opinion smoking marijuana makes you smarter and cooler and healthier. He also thinks pot cures heart attacks, broken bones and blindness.
(Confession: I’m exaggerating a little bit here. Dr. K doesn’t really believe smoking pot will heal cavities or bullet wounds to the chest suffered in a home-invasion robbery of a pot grower by six masked and armed patients from Vallejo in need of medicine.)
I don’t know how much difference there is between smoking tobacco and smoking marijuana, but the Keegans appear to believe it is enormous – you can bet your life on it.
Tommy Wayne Kramer is a longtime Ukiah resident;
Tom Hine voted No on Measure B for reasons he really doesn’t want to talk about.
Ukiah Daily Journal - A-6 – SUNDAY, MAY 25, 2008
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